World Rankings, does anybody care?

C

Cameron Smith

is kind of hungry...
Silver Member
I know that the various tours have their own rankings and they are important for seeding in their tournaments. However the world rankings in pool seem to be relatively unimportant. In every other sport, they make you painfully aware of who is the world number one and it is discussed at length. I don't hear much of this in pool.

On the forums we never (or at least rarely) refer to the rankings of the men, only the women. It seems as if pool rankings for the guys have absolutely no meaning, or at least very little meaning.

It is quite the opposite in snooker. Being in the top 16 means everything on the snooker circuit, it allows you to bypass a couple rounds of the tournament and gives you automatic entry into the world championships.

So I am wondering do any of you fans care about the rankings? I know I never pay attention to them. Secondly, do any of you pros care? I saw our own Steve Lipsky is ranking 154 in the world, Alex Pagualyan is ranked 44th and Earl Strickland is ranked 80th.
 
There's no uniform regular tour for the men like there is for the women. Most of the top women play in the WPBA tournaments, which is why their rankings are relatively accurate. With no comparable tour for the men the men's rankings are relatively meaningless by comparison.
 
Well...

Well Earl Strickland being 80th seems about right...
Where do you see these rankings becasue I would figure that very little guys from the US would be near the top as of late.

- Also I'm not trying to deliberately bag the US players, just the Germans, Taiwanese and Phillipenne guys really seem to be doing well over the last couple of years.
 
I think rankings are quite important for any pro sport. Unfortunately mens professional pool doesn't have a single, strong organisation like the women or snooker. Those closed shops make it much easier to have a meaningful ranking system, while any system I've seen for the men ranks only a subset of the players using a subset of tournaments. That is worthless imo.

Dave
 
The only value I see of rankings in any sport is to predict what matches will be interesting and entertaining to watch. To me who is interesting and entertaining to watch in pool is very dependent upon their playing style. I, for instance, don't find Souquet's style entertaining dispite his obvious skill and I love to watch Luc Salvas though everybody would agree his skill level is not as high as Ralf's.
What I'm saying is ranking is not a good indicator of relative entertainment value in pool so as a fan why should I care what a person's ranking is.
 
Cameron Smith said:
I know that the various tours have their own rankings and they are important for seeding in their tournaments. However the world rankings in pool seem to be relatively unimportant. In every other sport, they make you painfully aware of who is the world number one and it is discussed at length. I don't hear much of this in pool.

On the forums we never (or at least rarely) refer to the rankings of the men, only the women. It seems as if pool rankings for the guys have absolutely no meaning, or at least very little meaning.

It is quite the opposite in snooker. Being in the top 16 means everything on the snooker circuit, it allows you to bypass a couple rounds of the tournament and gives you automatic entry into the world championships.

So I am wondering do any of you fans care about the rankings? I know I never pay attention to them. Secondly, do any of you pros care? I saw our own Steve Lipsky is ranking 154 in the world, Alex Pagualyan is ranked 44th and Earl Strickland is ranked 80th.
Click to expand...

Good post Cameron,
I knew about the WPA rankings a few years ago but never paid them much attention. However I think Steve Lipsky mentioned that after the 14.1 World Championships he'd jumped onto the list and questioned its accuracy. I think mens pool NEEDS a world ranking list BUT the current format is a little flawed. The way it currently works is that certain events around the world are world ranking events, this normally includes several Euro Tour, UPA, and Asian Events, plus the various world championships (which I think are double points).

This seems logical due to the lack of funds in pool and the difficulty any player would have playing all events. From what I can tell I think the WPA rankings are used rarely for the purposes of invites.

I'm currently ranked 60th based on a few Euro Tour events and my reasonable 14.1 finish but this will no doubt change after the WPC and Japan "Open" which are both world ranking events (I wasn't invited! :p). The current standings and calculated on the following past events:


World 9-Ball Championships for Men 2006
Euro-Tour Switzerland 2006
Euro-Tour Rankweil
WPA World Straight Pool Championships
Predator Florida Open
Enjoypool.com Championships - Men's Division
Enjoypool.com Championships - Women's Division
World 9-Ball Championships Women 2006
Japan Open 2005 - Men's Division
Japan Open 2005 - Women's Division
World 8-Ball Championships 2005
Euro-Tour Frauenfeld, Switzerland
Euro-Tour Weert, Netherlands
World 9-Ball Championships for Men
Euro-Tour Rankweil, Austria
BCA US - Open 2005 - Men's Division
BCA US - Open 2005 - Womens Division
World 9-Ball Championships Rankweil, Austria
Japan Open Amagasaki City Japan

http://www.wpa-pool.com/index.asp?content=players_men

EDIT: They have updated the list since the WPC in Manila and I dropped to 71st :(
 
Last edited:
TheOne said:
Good post Cameron,
I knew about the WPA rankings a few years ago but never paid them much attention. However I think Steve Lipsky mentioned that after the 14.1 World Championships he'd jumped onto the list and questioned its accuracy. I think mens pool NEEDS a world ranking list BUT the current format is a little flawed. The way it currently works is that certain events around the world are world ranking events, this normally includes several Euro Tour, UPA, and Asian Events, plus the various world championships (which I think are double points).

This seems logical due to the lack of funds in pool and the difficulty any player would have playing all events. From what I can tell I think the WPA rankings are used rarely for the purposes of invites.

I'm currently ranked 60th based on a few Euro Tour events and my reasonable 14.1 finish but this will no doubt change after the WPC and Japan "Open" which are both world ranking events (I wasn't invited! :p). The current standings and calculated on the following past events:


World 9-Ball Championships for Men 2006
Euro-Tour Switzerland 2006
Euro-Tour Rankweil
WPA World Straight Pool Championships
Predator Florida Open
Enjoypool.com Championships - Men's Division
Enjoypool.com Championships - Women's Division
World 9-Ball Championships Women 2006
Japan Open 2005 - Men's Division
Japan Open 2005 - Women's Division
World 8-Ball Championships 2005
Euro-Tour Frauenfeld, Switzerland
Euro-Tour Weert, Netherlands
World 9-Ball Championships for Men
Euro-Tour Rankweil, Austria
BCA US - Open 2005 - Men's Division
BCA US - Open 2005 - Womens Division
World 9-Ball Championships Rankweil, Austria
Japan Open Amagasaki City Japan

http://www.wpa-pool.com/index.asp?content=players_men

EDIT: They have updated the list since the WPC in Manila and I dropped to 71st :(
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I was wondering though, can anybody play in the Eurotour or do you have to be from a european country? I guess if only european players were allowed to play, much like the Asian tour, then it would put the rest of world at a bit of a disadvantage.

The rankings I see on the list don't accurately represent the best players in the world. The players in the top 20 have all played something like 8-12 events. The players below that generally have played in 1-2 ranking events, hence Alex Pagualyans relatively low ranking.
 
Cameron Smith said:
Thanks for the info. I was wondering though, can anybody play in the Eurotour or do you have to be from a european country? I guess if only european players were allowed to play, much like the Asian tour, then it would put the rest of world at a bit of a disadvantage.

The rankings I see on the list don't accurately represent the best players in the world. The players in the top 20 have all played something like 8-12 events. The players below that generally have played in 1-2 ranking events, hence Alex Pagualyans relatively low ranking.
Click to expand...

Anyone can play on euro tour, they currently have over 700 players in the rankings list, I believe Busty used to play on it when he lived in Germany but Nigel Francis from USA plays in it now for sure.

The rankings used to be much more even but the demise of the UPA seems to have skewed them a little, the world summit and us open used to be on the list. Its a 2 year system and seemed to have about 3 events in each region until recently.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top